Why are RED Cameras Industry Standard?

A

achieply

New member
I was curious if anyone could provide some insight for me as to why RED Cameras are industry-standard right behind Arri with the Alexa Cameras? I know many feature films choose to shoot with the Alexa but when they don't it's usually one of the RED cameras. I not saying RED makes bad cameras but why do many production choice RED over Sony, Panasonic, or Canon when they can't use the Alexa?


Please keep this civil.
 
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The Red cameras are not industry standard. Arri is the industry standard for digital cinema cameras. For Netflix originals (which have to be acquired in true UHD/4K) the Red, F55 and the Varicam 35 are the major players. Until and unless Arri releases a camera with a S35, true 4K sensor, that will remain the case. From this article, 8 of the 14 Netflix originals used Red cameras, and not for every season.
 
Don't forget film. Its sitting side by side with Red, but the standard seems is Arri Digital. I keep having people ask about 35 and 16mm
 
It's because Red offers 8K and resolution is very important to telling a story while most of the Arri cameras can't even shoot 4K which is required for all content on Netflix including content not commissioned by Netflix. Back in 2010 Arri used to be popular but they haven't updated their sensor once since then so most big Hollywood movies have moved on to the ever updating Red cameras. Another reason that Red is popular is because it has market savvy names and good marketing that appeal to the younger generation while Arri approaches marketing in a more straightforward and boring way which appeals to old timers who are behind the times and dying off.

My mom bought me my first Red when I was 22 and had just graduated from film school. Unfortunately my school only had Arri film cameras to shoot on so I didn't make any films until after I graduated and had a Red camera. A lot of my potential clients thought I was really cool because I had a Red camera and that made me feel good about myself and encouraged me to start making movies. I made my first movie 10 years later when I was 32 after having gone through owning 11 different models of the Red cameras, each iteration better than the previous. My first film I took my girlfriend out to a fair and filmed her eating ice cream, smiling at the camera on a Ferris wheel, laughing at a clown show, and I got lots of rack focuses from the lighting of the fair back to her face, all in slow motion with my wide open Rokinon primes. I put melancholic music to it and being that it is in 8K, the movie really has deep meaning, especially since her sister suffers from Alzheimer's.

The low light on the newest Red cameras are incredible; after spending just 15 minutes black balancing before each shot and about 10 hours denoising in post production for my one minute short film, I had a film that I knew would mean a lot to those who have suffered. And I plan to finish the edit eventually but I just bought another update of the latest Red camera and I need to figure out and purchase all the accessories for it since my previous Red's accessories are not backwards compatible, so the edit for that movie has gone on the back burner for now, plus a lot of the festival submissions aren't until later in the year, and I may want to push for a 2020 release to give more time to hype up the film.

As for Canon, Sony, and Panasonic, none of their cameras shoot 8K either, so they're all pretty pointless.
 
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Eric Coughlin said:
It's because Red offers 8K and resolution is very important to telling a story while most of the Arri cameras can't even shoot 4K which is required for all content on Netflix including content not commissioned by Netflix. Back in 2010 Arri used to be popular but they haven't updated their sensor once since then so most big Hollywood movies have moved on to the ever updating Red cameras. Another reason that Red is popular is because it has market savvy names and good marketing that appeal to the younger generation while Arri approaches marketing in a more straightforward and boring way which appeals to old timers who are behind the times and dying off.

My mom bought me my first Red when I was 22 and had just graduated from film school. Unfortunately my school only had Arri film cameras to shoot on so I didn't make any films until after I graduated and had a Red camera. A lot of my potential clients thought I was really cool because I had a Red camera and that made me feel good about myself and encouraged me to start making movies. I made my first movie 10 years later when I was 32 after having gone through owning 11 different models of the Red cameras, each iteration better than the previous. My first film I took my girlfriend out to a fair and filmed her eating ice cream, smiling at the camera on a Ferris wheel, laughing at a clown show, and I got lots of rack focuses from the lighting of the fair back to her face, all in slow motion with my wide open Rokinon primes. I put melancholic music to it and being that it is in 8K, the movie really has deep meaning, especially since her sister suffers from Alzheimer's.

The low light on the newest Red cameras are incredible; after spending just 15 minutes black balancing before each shot and about 10 hours in denoising in post production for my one minute short film, I had a film that I knew would mean a lot to those who have suffered. And I plan to finish the edit eventually but I just bought another update of the latest Red camera and I need to figure out and purchase all the accessories for it since my previous Red's accessories are not backwards compatible, so the edit for that movie has gone on the back burner for now, plus a lot of the festival submissions aren't until later in the year, and I may want to push for a 2020 release to give more time to hype up the film.

As for Canon, Sony, and Panasonic, none of their cameras shoot 8K either, so they're all pretty pointless.
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Pretty good! :2vrolijk_08:
 
Three reasons:

(1) RED offered extremely high-quality, high-resolution digital images at a very early time during the worldwide motion picture imaging transition (from film).

[Note: Anyone with a lot of money could have done this but Jim (Oakley) is a smart businessman and saw the potential (or his team did). Other companies weren't doing enough and/or were thousands of miles away on different land across oceans. The United States of America needed strong innovation and representation. It as simple as that.

(2) Because of RED's early technological contributions they became an industry-standard option like ARRI (who was founded in 1917 and built their first camera in 1924, which is insane, BTW).

The Japanese - who are brilliant - moved too slow. (There were exceptions, but they obviously weren't good enough.)

[Note: ARRI made a digital cinema camera - which was better than everything else - at the right time. It could have been anyone. If it were a few years later (RED was still growing in 2010) it could have easily been RED that took the #1 spot, but it wasn't and once a monopoly favored choice like choosing an ALEXA has a few years to become an industry-DECISION it's borderline impossible to change.

(3) RED cameras can and do look very good. And can look very different than the competition.

[Note: Export an ungraded sequence shot in the middle of the day (sun) and it could look like any new flavor-of-the-month mirrorless, but put millions of dollars behind professionals working with REDCODE RAW and you'll quickly understand why RED cameras are at the top of the go-to list.

___

The last 2-3 years have been absolutely explosive in terms of closing the quality gap and it will be interesting to see how a new generation of decision-makers takes over. All eyes on the Sony VENICE for the next 2 years.

Because if it can't make an impact then nothing can, and ARRI and RED will be Apple and Microsoft forever.
 
Because they can make lovely pictures, and they’re first layer of control (via the touchscreen) is less painful than most of the others.
 
Eric Coughlin said:
It's because Red offers 8K and resolution is very important to telling a story while most of the Arri cameras can't even shoot 4K which is required for all content on Netflix including content not commissioned by Netflix.
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This is not true.

Netflix screen plenty of content not acquired at 4K. I have a few shows I shot screening on Netflix and they sure weren't shot 4K.

The 4K netflix requirement is only for Netflix Original content. Stuff that they commision and pay for.

To the OP.

I would say In the circles I live in, episodic TV drama, they aren't the standard. Arri very much is, followed by Sony.

Eric Coughlin said:
I made my first movie 10 years later when I was 32 after having gone through owning 11 different models of the Red cameras, each iteration better than the previous.
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And yet though Arri have a few different models, they're still considered the better camera, to this day still based on the very same sensor they had when RED made their first camera. T

I think initially they got a lot of attention for being the first to do easily accessible 4K and a great RAW workflow.

And to this day they are very much the premium of the owner operators. For a while Netflix kept them going because of the 4K rule on Netflix originals, but nowadays there are more and more 4K+ options and I think they've lost their competitive edge in this market.

They still suffer the stigma of being not as reliable, taking a very long time to boot up, and ultimately a look that less DP's seem to like.

I think they're being squeezed in an interesting way right now. Arri and now Sony are taking what was their main competitive advantage (High Res / K count) and from below in the sub 10K market a lot of cameras are outperforming some of their features and utility.

Komodo may save their bacon.

JB
 
Eric Coughlin said:
It's because Red offers 8K and resolution is very important to telling a story while most of the Arri cameras can't even shoot 4K which is required for all content on Netflix including content not commissioned by Netflix. Back in 2010 Arri used to be popular but they haven't updated their sensor once since then so most big Hollywood movies have moved on to the ever updating Red cameras. Another reason that Red is popular is because it has market savvy names and good marketing that appeal to the younger generation while Arri approaches marketing in a more straightforward and boring way which appeals to old timers who are behind the times and dying off.

My mom bought me my first Red when I was 22 and had just graduated from film school. Unfortunately my school only had Arri film cameras to shoot on so I didn't make any films until after I graduated and had a Red camera. A lot of my potential clients thought I was really cool because I had a Red camera and that made me feel good about myself and encouraged me to start making movies. I made my first movie 10 years later when I was 32 after having gone through owning 11 different models of the Red cameras, each iteration better than the previous. My first film I took my girlfriend out to a fair and filmed her eating ice cream, smiling at the camera on a Ferris wheel, laughing at a clown show, and I got lots of rack focuses from the lighting of the fair back to her face, all in slow motion with my wide open Rokinon primes. I put melancholic music to it and being that it is in 8K, the movie really has deep meaning, especially since her sister suffers from Alzheimer's.

The low light on the newest Red cameras are incredible; after spending just 15 minutes black balancing before each shot and about 10 hours denoising in post production for my one minute short film, I had a film that I knew would mean a lot to those who have suffered. And I plan to finish the edit eventually but I just bought another update of the latest Red camera and I need to figure out and purchase all the accessories for it since my previous Red's accessories are not backwards compatible, so the edit for that movie has gone on the back burner for now, plus a lot of the festival submissions aren't until later in the year, and I may want to push for a 2020 release to give more time to hype up the film.

As for Canon, Sony, and Panasonic, none of their cameras shoot 8K either, so they're all pretty pointless.
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Funny thing is, i know a guy whose “mom bought him a RED”, and he is shooting with some top names right now. It definitely is a leg up. Anyone who was smart back then and had some talent and work ethic, had the opportunity to buy their way into fast tracking a career.
 
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achieply said:
I was curious if anyone could provide some insight for me as to why RED Cameras are industry-standard right behind Arri with the Alexa Cameras...
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As others have mentioned, I'm not sure you can call them a de facto industry standard after ARRI, but I think we can agree on that they are a popular choice.

Some reasons that stand out to me are:

  • They entered the business as a Digital Cinema Camera early—with some bang. RED made a name for itself and has maintained its position as 'high end' for reasons that follow below.
  • They offered "high" resolution at a proper sensor size from the beginning. The resolution thing should not be discarded, as in the beginning it was more a question of being able to reproduce film's "infinite"* resolution.
  • One of, if not THE largest asset of RED has been Redcode. RED's version of compressed raw has been very succesful and was and is well received in many production pipelines. RED has been able to continuously update and refine its color science (and they've had their fair share of things to iron out), and Redcode has made all updates backwards compatible with old footage. Redcode is probably as ubiquitous as any of the other popular codecs in various post facilities around the world and I think many of the professionals working there are practical people (which ironically turned into a strength of ARRI). Many, many colorists have learned to work with (and appreciate) Redcode for its flexibility: 'better the devil you know'.
  • RED cameras are everywhere. When they break down, you can find another one. Many packages are competitively priced for rental (even if that isn't always a huge factor).
  • The RED brand has maintained its status to mean 'professional gear'. You can say "we shot on RED", without mentioning the camera**, but you don't likely say "we shot on Sony" or we shot on "Canon".

I think ARRI is successful because it has the most desirable look, but in ADDITION it's easy to use and practical. The system is well liked among operators. RED has some of that. To a lesser extent in terms of cameras (even though some models are popular), but more so on the post side of things.


*= film doesn't have infinite resolution, but in the transition from analog to digital there is always the same debate. RED's 4K resolution actually did bring something more organic to the table in the beginning, compared to the—at the time—smaller sensors with HD resolution.

**=maybe because to many, the camera itself isn't all that important, but rather what comes out of it: a practical manageable file recorded onto media you don't need a Pelican case with a handle to carry.
 
Also, to parody the title of this thread,

“Why is this posted in industry news?”

Always seems the people that dislike RED, also dislike posting anywhere but industry news and information. I think we already have two Red hate threads going here, plus one in the Café. Gets me in the mood for some classic music though.
 
Three early non-technical factors helped RED make quick headway in the industry as a whole...

The first was the 2007/2008 writers strike... Memory is fuzzy on the particulars, but at the time there was some exception for non-film dramatic content and RED was seen as a more film-like large sensor alternative to the 2/3" CineAltas and Varicams of the time. Suddenly, LOTS of hour TV long drama was "made on RED".

On the film side you have the careful grooming and championship of celebrity filmmakers like Soderbergh, Fincher, Jackson and others from the get-go.

Third was the rise of 3D following Avatar. Tiny RED cameras for stereo made more sense than trying to cofigure large Alexas or big broadcast style bodies on stereo rigs. I think Hugo was Alexa, but afterward the vast majority of native 3D films were shot on RED.
 
Are you certain those are all non technical factors? 1 and 3 sound like technical ones.

Also, just curious if Soderbergh is also groomed by Apple to shoot on the iPhone? Or if he is the kind of Maverick to shoot on unconventional cameras? I don’t think he was groomed in any meaningful way.

Aside from the possible symantics, i don’t entirely disagree with you.
 
RED

The Bad News:

It's been unreliable
It's been overcomplicated (esp. vs. ARRI)
It's PR has been non-constructive
Red owners have been part of the non-constructive PR

These are the reasons many don't like Red cameras and their owners.

The Good News:

It became popular because it provided value at a time when the cartel wasn't willing to give it
It was small, sexy, and light compared to cartel cameras, and continues to be svelter vs. the cartel-cams
REDCODE (Wavelet compressed video, first provided by Cineform (including Bayer) and JPEG2000) still provides the best bang-for-buck quality & filesize for high-end production
RED's current color science is right up there with ARRI and Venice- not the same, a different flavor and can and does cut between them easily
When Lucy was shot in Europe with the Sony F65 A-cam, they couldn't source any more F65's, so they went with Reds for car chases, action scenes, and anywhere they needed small, light-ish, coverage and it worked great


Regarding the camera cartel- I don't think it's a bad thing per se, think of all the people working at all those companies and the jobs they provide. Keiretsu is part of the culture. Claims that the cartel doesn't exist is dishonest and that is bad PR.
 
Jim Arthurs said:
The first was the 2007/2008 writers strike... Memory is fuzzy on the particulars, but at the time there was some exception for non-film dramatic content and RED was seen as a more film-like large sensor alternative to the 2/3" CineAltas and Varicams of the time. Suddenly, LOTS of hour TV long drama was "made on RED".
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RED joined a field that already had several working large chip cameras in the Panavision Genesis and Arri D20, and joined shortly by the Sony F35. RED was significantly more affordable so the dent it made initially was based on cost plus the novelty of higher resolution. However the post workflow was a dealbreaker so there were actually relatively few hourlong TV series that stuck with RED after an initial tryout, compared to the alternatives.
 
Eric Coughlin said:
Another reason that Red is popular is because it has market savvy names and good marketing that appeal to the younger generation while Arri approaches marketing in a more straightforward and boring way which appeals to old timers who are behind the times and dying off.
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This so feels like trolling.
 
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